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12.12.2011

we like lists: list # 12: ten best of anything

Lists are back! I was a little disappointed in the turnout for our last list, awesome art. Statcounter and Google Reader tell me that a few hundred people read this blog; I wish more of them would jump in the comment pool. But even if only from the core group of wmtc commenters... we like lists!

This list is down to you. It's a list of the ten best. Ten best... you tell me. Ten best baseball players. Ten best reasons to quit your job. Ten best varieties of apples. Ten best places to drink coffee. Whatever you like. The list can be fact-based, objective and debatable, or purely opinion.

My list is the ten best feel-good songs, laura k edition. You know what a feel-good song is - the music guaranteed to make you smile. Songs that make me want to grab an air-microphone and dance around the room.

Maybe we have already done this, but this is my top ten places in the world to visit --- that is, places I have been, not places I'd like to go to. That would be a different list which I also thought about making, but I will limit myself to ONE list! This is also in order of preference, FWIW.

1. The Outer Cape (Wellfleet, Truro, Provincetown)

2. New York City

3. Italy---in particular, Assisi and Florence, but anywhere in Umbria or Tuscany, and also Rome.

4. Boston

5. San Francisco

6. Chicago

7. London

8. St. Martin

9. Jerusalem

10. Vermont

I didn't include western MA since it's where I live, not where I think of going, but it's definitely also in my top ten.

2. Up against the wall, motherfucker! (Boca stands on her hind legs, front legs stretched up on the wall. I stroll over and pat her down, looking for any hidden weapons, while reciting the Miranda warning.)

3. Up against the wall, Yankeelover! (Same trick as #2, but cleaned up for a youthful audience.)

4. The Look. (Six riled-up dogs at the door, all barking their fool heads off. I stop typing, spin 90 degrees, and, ignoring them, look alertly at the door. Within five seconds, silence; within ten, they all disappear.)

5. The Deep Knee Bend. (Chloe or Boca walking around on their hind legs; they squat into a sit-pretty posture, stand, squat again, repeat until treat arrives.)

Amy, with all respect to John's dogs, I doubt they're any smarter than Cassie. Part of John's life work is dog training. If you worked with Cassie the way he works with his pack, I'd bet she'd do the same.

You may be right, Laura. Cassie is a very smart dog. We didn't adopt her until she was about a year old, but we never had to take her to dog school like we did with our first dog. She just seemed to learn by listening and wanting to please. And somehow she figured out her new name (since we have no idea what her original name was) almost immediately. (I used to run through lots of other common dog names to see if she reacted to any of them, but she never perked up her ears for any other name.)

But yeah, we never focused on more than the basic essentials. I have NO complaints about Cassie!

1. Before the potato famine, the population of Ireland was ~8 million. In the 1980s, the population of Ireland was ~3 million. Birth control became legal in Ireland in 1979.

2. The official languages of Ireland are Irish and English. Irish has precedence, but scarcely anyone speaks it as a mother tongue.

3. At the time of Confederation, there was no road or rail link between the Maritime provinces and the rest of Canada. You had to go by boat up the St. Lawrence. In the winter, when the St. Lawrence froze over, it was faster and easier to get from Halifax to England than from Halifax to Montreal - to get to England, you took a big ship across the Atlantic as usual, whereas to get to Montreal you had to snowshoe. One of the first projects of Confederation was building a rail link.

4. Newfoundland and Labrador doesn't count as a Maritime province because they weren't there at Confederation. If you need to refer collectively to NB, NS, PEI and NL, you have to call them the Atlantic provinces. Apparently these distinctions are important to some people.

Imp Strump, thanks for that list. Some I knew, some I did not, and some I knew, but didn't know the backstory.

Amy, all our dogs (all rescues) learned their names so quickly, too. After we rescued the little terrier who would become Clyde, I didn't want to name her, because we weren't going to keep her. When she started answering to Little Dog, I figured it was time for a name.

John, I meant life's work in the best and truest meaning of the word. One of your means of self-fulfilment. But you knew that.

I do think canines are inherently intelligent and educable. Most dogs love to learn.

Cody did not love to learn. Cody could give a shit about learning. Just another way that she was more feline and canine, a cat dressed up in a dog suit.

Btw, in case anyone is interested, abortion is still not legal in Ireland, including in Northern Ireland, which is part of the UK. Irish women who need to terminate pregnancies must travel to England - which until recently was also illegal. My friend Mara founded and runs this group that helps Irish women make the journey.

What year did Joe Namath host a variety show Xmas Special that (I think) featured a lot of Playboy bunnies? I have a memory of this show playing on a TV at some open-house-like school function one night when I was a kid. I assume early 70s, because, e.g., December 1971 = 3rd grade.

In that vein, and getting rid of a list idea I once suggested to L:

Songs Tied To Your Childhood Or To Distant Memories

1. Wichita Lineman, Glen Campbell, 1968 (LP, home)

2. Good Morning Starshine, Oliver, 1969 (car radio)

3. Sundown, Gordon Lightfoot, 1974 (AM radio)

4. Sister Golden Hair, America, 1975 (town pool)

...

I was semi-obsessed with AM radio and being a DJ as a kid so I listened to a lot of whatever was being played on AM radio in the early to mid 70s. Loved the year-end Top 100. They would play them all out of order, except for the Top 10 or whatever. (And yes, I would keep a list and fill them as the weekend went along, scorecard-style.) ... Neil Diamond's Cracklin' Rose (1970) was another oft-played song.

Not for an English teacher! I've spent 40 years trying to ignore the worst pet-peeve stuff because it's a professional sidetrack. This morning I reread 'Politics and the English Language,' and the problems Orwell describes are where I try to direct my attention.

Re your 9:41 post, Laura: my wife's grandmother was president of the WCTU in Pennsylvania back before Prohibition and, for lots of reasons, she remains a ghost at many a meal--so I have a translation problem. When I first saw 'wmtc,' I half-read it as 'WCTU' and had to do a mental hop-skip to get it right--does that make sense? I'm still not quite over that little synaptic slippage.

Similarly: walking down Oxford St in London and seeing a giant 'FCUK' painted on a building. Is there any literate English speaker who does not automatically rearrange the letters and see that as 'FUCK'? 'French Connection United Kingdom' ought to be ashamed!

Re FCUK, I was about to say what James said. I couldn't figure out if John was kidding or not!

Re WCTU vs wmtc, that kind of thing often happens to me. And others, apparently. We used to have a friend who always referred to the lead singer of REM as "Michael Stripe". We didn't have the heart to tell him.

I enjoy cooking, but I've never cooked anything I wouldn't enjoy eating!

Re honey butter peanuts, Allan and I cannot remember the brand names of these. Mr. Peanut made them. They were peanuts with a thick hard coating around them, made of butter and sugar. They were that irresistible combination of sweet and salty. We would buy a can of those, a bag of cheese doodles and a six of Molson's (green bottles, what is called Export in Canada).

The top three shot to the top thanks to living in NYC for a coule years. #4 is from every trip from CT/RI/MA to Jersey and points south/west. #5 is from heading to the George from CT via Westchester (1975-2005). #6 is for Mets games. And the rest from just general but fairly rare East River Crossings while staying within NYC.

If you count the Park Avenue Bridge, which is only for trains, that would be way up there, maybe #1 even.

Peanut update: I believe they were called "Sweet N' Crunchy Peanuts" [sic]. If you ever see them, you should buy and eat them. But don't say I didn't warn you. They are soooo yummy, totally addictive and have like a million grams of fat per serving. (Serving being 1/2 can if you are sharing with someone... full can if you are not.)

Laura, getting back to this Namath-on-Brady-Bunch thing: It was classic. Bobby pretends to be a sick child and he and Cindy convey this in a letter to Broadway Joe, asking if he'll come visit. Namath falls for it hook, line, and sinker, and a few days later, shows up at the door asking about the boy on his deathbed. Dad realizes what's going on, apologizes to Joe, and orders Bobby and Cindy "penalized for illegal procedure." But Joe figures a kid who tries that hard to see him must be a huge fan, and, hey, as long as he's there, and as long as the Bradys have an AstroTurf backyard...let's go throw some passes together! And everybody happily looks on as Joe throws the "bomb" to Bobby, who makes the grab.

I've probably watched less than 5 epsiodes of the Brady Bunch in my life. I didn't like the show when I was a kid, and never got the ironic value when I was older. So this is lost on me - but thanks for filling me in. :)

I like deang's list, it could inspire a whole run of "things I now eat" and other eating-related lists.

I could do a list of foods I hated as a kid and STILL hate. Bananas, ketchup, relish, mustard, beets, liver, pickles (other than half sours which I like)---almost anything pickled or vinegary smelling. Mostly has to do with smells and/or texture. But bananas and ketchup top the list; I will move away from anyone eating those---even my grandson!

Now there are also lots of foods I didn't eat as a child that I now love, like almost any vegetable. Thank goodness some of my tastes matured!

Thanks, Laura, for keeping bananas away from me. I have become somewhat more tolerant. Harvey likes the damn things, and although he knows better than to eat one near me, I do tolerate the fact that they are on my kitchen counter. But yeah, once they get brown and smelly, out they go!

Allan, I don't get the Michael Kay reference. I sure don't want to have anything in common with him, but who can account for taste?

Corn, potatoes and tomatoes, three of the world's greatest, most basic foods. And corn was invented! Unlike all the other staple grains - wheat, rice, barley - maize wasn't found in the wild then domesticated.

And the big Mesoamerican trio of corn/tomatoes/squash is one of the most perfect nutritional combinations, and when grown in the same plots, keeps the soil balanced.

TOOL had two songs on one album, one sounding like some kind of Nazi rally, the other sounding like a love poem--but since both were in different languages, what speakers of the other language wouldn't know was that the Nazi rally-ish song's lyrics (in German) were merely a cookie recipe, while the love poem-ish one's lyrics (in Italian/English) were from a threatening phone message. Another song on that album has something like "suck my little dick" sung in Portuguese, I think.

I woke up this morning thinking that I should do a list of ten things I hate about winter, but figured that all had moved on from this post. But in the Bah Humbug anti-holiday spirit expressed by Laura, here's that list:

I am on board with the entirety of your Christmas list (hah! see what I did there!?), but instead of putting muzak twice, I would have put THE FUCKING BELLS. Little needles of high-pitched sound insinuating themselves into my brain.

As if their rampant homophobia wasn't enough of a reason to hate the Salvation Army, I have to hear their jingling in supermarkets, the train station, any mall I'm stupid enough to go to at this time of year.

Scrooge had it right. Bah humbug to the lot of them. If it weren't an excuse to cook a turkey and see some cousins I only get to see a couple of times a year, I would avoid the whole holiday completely.

I have a few exceptions for this one: The Grinch, because Chuck Jones + Boris Karloff = Win, and the Doctor Who Christmas Specials, since they have little to do with Christmas other than being set at that time of year (the "End of Time" special even made reference to Christmas as a "pagan celebration").

Zim is a weird and wonderful cartoon that somehow got onto Nickelodeon in spite of its creator being best known for a comic book called Johnny The Homicidal Maniac. It's very dark and very silly, and features the best story about organ theft in public schools ever.

Grinch - first 20 minutes only. Right up until the overloaded sled is teetering on the cliff's point's edge, if I recall - and the town's children's voices carry up to Mr. G's ears. I even love his put-upon, overworked dog!

Invader Zim sounds right up my alley. I also love the Grinch's dog! I haven't seen the Peanuts special in years, but I'm sure I'd still like it.

I'm pretty sure that's it, though. Last night during Coronation Street, I saw the CBC ads for all the Xmas shows - one piece o' crap after the next. The Grinch and Peanuts are the exceptions that prove the truth behind Amy's list.

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You may never know what results come of your action, but if you do nothing, there will be no result.Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi

Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed citizens can change the world. Indeed, it is the only thing that ever has.Margaret Mead

From each according to his ability, to each according to his need.Karl Marx

There is a tendency to think that what we see in the present moment will continue. We forget how often we have been astonished by the sudden crumbling of institutions, by extraordinary changes in people's thoughts, by unexpected eruptions of rebellion against tyrannies, by the quick collapse of systems of power that seemed invincible.Howard Zinn